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THE REPUBLIC AT PEACE! 



A DISCOURSE DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF 
THE NATIONAL FAST, JUNE IST, 1865, IN THE 
CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER, CINCINNATI, OHIO, 

BY RKV. A. D, MAYO, 
i' First pure, then peaceable."— J AMKslii. 17. 
~ While the imposing funeral ceremonies of 
Abraham Lincoln were yet proceeding, An- 
drew Johnson, his successor in the oflBce of 
President of the United States, issued his Pro- 
clamation, on the 25lh April, calling upon the 
loyal people of this Republic to observe the 1st 
June in solemn service to Almighty God, in 
memory of the good man who has been re- 
moved, so that all shall be occupied at the 
same time in contemplation of his virtues, and 
sorrow for his sudden and violent end. We 
are here to-day in response to that call. 



— G G " 



Not two months have elapsed since the death 
of Abraham Lincoln ; but the news has gone 
round the world, and already has every civil- 
ized nation uttered its voice of sorrow and ap- 
preciation. Never in history has there been a 
verdict to the excellence of one man so prompt 
and so unanimous. From St. Petersburgh to 
San Francisco, the head of every great nation 
has spoken, and all have repeated the same 
thing — that in the sudden fall of Abraham Lin- 
coln, the cause of good government, public and 
private virtue, and human advancement, has 
met a bereavement that can only be explained 
by a gracious Providence. No man of any re- 
putation in any civilized land has dared, even 
if he has desired, to disparage the character 
and services of the good President so suddenly 
removed from his lofty position. In the loyal 
States of the Republic, his bitterest political 
and personal enemies have almost caught the 
words of eulogy out of the mouths of his best 
friends. The rebel leaders who, for the past 
four years, have covered his name with every 
species of calumny, and some of whom have 
certainly contemplated, if not plotted his vio- 
lent death, make haste to purge themselves of 
this suspicion of the crime of his taking off. 
The sovereigns of all the great empires on the 
globe know too well how different and rare is 
such virtue as his in such a place, and bear 
affectionato tribute to a character they cannot 
hope to excel. And from the innermost heart 
of every people on the globe is coming up that 
spontaneous assurance which will become the 
deliberate verdict of history, that our departed 
father will take his place among the few who 
were at once the rulers and the benefactors of 
mankind. 

And already do all good and sincere men 
begin to feel the inspiring and reconciling in- 
fluence of his motnory. I am sure I only set 
forth the common experience when I say that 
I am able to bear my own little temptations 
and toils and trials better when I think how 
patiently and meekly and persistently he 
wrought, endured, and resisted during the 



.±. 



four dreadful years of his probation as the 
head of this people. If I have any grievances 
from the neglect and suspicion of my friend or 
the machinations of my enemy, I can more 
easily control my wrath and contain myself 
when I reflect through what a storm of ridicule 
and detraction and treachery and hatred he 
calmly walked his blood-stained path, through 
much tribulation, to his exceeding great 
triumph. I believe all men who have to do 
with public affairs in this country are already 
learning from his career how much stronger is 
justice and moderation and patient duty than 
any violence of zeal or shrewdness of state- 
craft. 

But perhaps the best lesson he has taught 
U3 in national life— a lesson also taught by the 
career of his great compeer, and almost his as- 
sociate in martyrdom, the Secretary of State- 
is, that true statesmanship^consists in conduct- 
ing affairs on the most hopeful principle in the '■ 
gloomiest times. If there was anything which 
has been especially misunderstood in the poli- 
cy of these two men it is this — that they have, 
from the first, had a faith in the existence of 
the Union that nothing could shake ; have be- 
lieved that this terrible rebellion was only an 
episode in the triumphant progress of the Re- 
public to a true democracy ; that the day 
would come when all men, at home and abroad, 
who in any way countenanced it, would wish 
to have the fact buried in oblivion ; and that 
out public policy, foreign and domestic, should 
be conducted on the principle that when the 
tumult was over, well-meaning men should 
find no bar to reconciliation and repentance in 
the attitude of the Government of the United 
States. Neither of these two men has left a 
line on record that need make any man on 
earth his personal or political foe in this hour 
of reunion. ' Neither has advised one revenge- 
ful or retaliatory measure that need keep any 
enemy at home or abroad from becoming our 
fast friend. While doing the severe duty of 
the hour ; while signing together the great 
Proclamation of Emancipation that dissolved 
society through fifteen States they have worked 
all through like Providence,unrelenting in ideas, 



but full of clemency for fallible and erring men. 
The furious patriotism that has wasted itself in 
their detraction now confesses itself overmas- 
tered by a greatness so far-reaching and admir- 
able, and hereafter men will not so easily des- 
pair of the Republic. 

The character and memory of this good 
man has alreadyjbegun to unite his late distract- 
ed country. The cry for vengeance that rose 
from his violent death grows fainter every day as 
that gracious life comes more clearly into promi- 
nence. The foes of the Union seemed paralyzed 
by what they had done, and seventy-five thou- 
sand hostile men have grounded arms in si- 
lence since that day, until no recognized army 
of the rebellion now exists. From every part 
of the South comes up a lamentation over the 
fall of the Father who knew when to chastise 
and how to forgive. And the fiercest zealots 
of an exterminating barbarism seem to recoil 
on approaching the calm atmosphere of that 
untroubled soul. I know not what outbreaks 
of passion we may yet witness. I cannot tell 
what barbaric counsels may prevail. But I am 
convinced that God has in the life and memory 
of this noble man built up for us a temple of 
concord ; and that the Union of the future will 
come only as fast as we act towards each other 
in his spirit, and carry out his lofty policy. I 
do not believe a word of what we have been 
told, that God removed Abraham Lincoln from 
us because he was too amiable and gracious for 
the stern duties of this hour of reconstruction. 
I do not pretend to read the will of Providence ; 
but if anything is clear to me in this confused 
time, it is that God has, in the life and charac- 
ter of Abraham Lincoln, given us a model of 
what must be the style of citizenship and pub- 
lic policy which can alone reconcile the hatreds 
of two centuries, and mould iwo opposing 
forces of society into one enduring Republic, 

So, already, is it appearing that the death of 
this man was not the work of a malignant fate, 
but the dispensation of a Providence as benign 
as it is awful, which smites only to heal, and, 
through the most fearful periods of human 
wrath, works steadily towards the broadest 
human welfare. 



But to-day, along with our meditation upon 
the character of the departed President, comes 
the consciousness of the Eepuhlic at Peace. In 
the swift days that have flown since his depart- 
ure, the last army of the boasted "Confedera- 
cy" has laid down its arms; the last ship of its 
piratical navy has ceased to threaten commerce; 
its President, and the greater portion of its j 
leading men in civil or military life are in the 
power of the Union, dependent on the clemen- 1 
cy of Andrew Johnson for their lives ; its cur- 
rency has passed into the waste-bags of the 
Southern housekeepers, and its archives fill the 
lumber-rooms of the state buildings at Wash- 
ington ; its very name has ceased to designate 
any existing thing. 

As I passed up the Ohio river two days 
ago, I saw a dejected, worn-out young man, , 
dressed almost like a beggar, sitting about in \ 
the corners of the boat, evidently curious to | 
know if he would be observed. While he sat 
there alone, an old negro woman, respectably 
dressed, with a look that denoted years of 
faithful nursing in some family, made her way 
up to and addressed him with a good-natured 
voice. That young man was a Kentucky slave- 
owner four years ago. His cruelty to his old 
nurse had driven her from her home of sixty 
years. She had come to the North to find her. 
rights. He had enlisted in the rebel army to 
find his. He was now going home to face his 
humiliation. The contrast between these two 
persons set forth in striking colors the present 
status of that guiltiest aristocracy of modern 
days. The Republic has awakened from its 
fevered dream of woe, and is now at peace. 

Perhaps it is better to keep fast than thanks- 
giving upon this, too. I believe in keeping no 
fast to propitiate an angry deity, or beg off 
from the just penalty for the nation's sins. 
That is pagan, as even the old Hebrew prophet ^ 
told the world twenty-five hundred years ago. 
But we may well make this a day of solemn re- 
flection on our present condition,^nd our duty 
in the future. We cannot say this triumph is 
our own work. It is God's mighty providence 
wrought out by means of our cooperation ; 
and though we may rejoice that we are the 
chosen agents of the glorious achievement, 



we may not arrogate the merit. I doubt if, as a 
people, we have deserved as much as tve now 
have accomplished. When we consider how 
many years we not only permitted our national 
scandal to go on, but petted it, became proud, 
and strong, and encouraged its insolence, and, 
had it been willing, would have bought it off 
at the last hour, at the price of our brother's 
manhood ; when we think how slowly we, the 
people of the loyal States, came up to the du- 
ties of the hour, making it an impossibility 
that our President should move faster than he 
did move towards the victory of the right; 
when we contemplate the coldness and hostility 
to a true republic that still abound ; we can 
only say, that God in his mercy has given us 
another opportunity to raise up a nation on the 
corner-stone of the Golden Rule. He has not 
given it so much for our desert as to arouse us 
to do all we can for mankind. Let us rejoice 
with a holy joy, mingled with fear, and draw 
near God in prayers that shall blossom into 
lives of purity and peace 

And the great question to-day is, how can 
this suspension of war become a real peace ? 
For we have yet no actual peace ; only its 
favorable conditions. The war that has deso- 
lated this fair land these four sad years did 
not reside in cannon, and rifles, and armored 
ships, and sabres, but in the souls of the men 
who used them against each other. These weap- 
ons of destruction have ceased to do their 
dreadful work j but the war still makes a hell 
in the souls of millions of our countrymen. 
You have only to look in the faces of half the 
men and women across our river to behold a 
hatred to the Union and the freedom it now 
represents, that contains the material for a 
thousand wars. This aristocracy, the haughtiest 
and the most unreasonable in the world, that 
has so moved heaven, and earth, and hell to 
work our destruction, is not to subside at 
once into gentle, loving citizenship of a repub- 
lic the very opposite of that it tried to estab- 
lish. These millions of poor and middling class 
white people, so cruelly deceived and so com- 
pletely despoiled in the war ; these other mil- 
lions of newly-liberated bondmen, who float 
now like a black cloud over the South with no 



fixed status in society, are not to strike hands 
with one another all at once. This great fierce 
North, greedy for money, elated with the sense 
of power, itself divided by the machinations of 
its own barbarism, is still to have its trials. 
How is peace to come to these thirty millions 
that shall unite us in one people ; that shall 
make that people a true Democracy founded on 
justice and reverence for man ; that shall hold 
the Union intact when there are fifty States 
and a hundred millions of people, of whom ten 
millions will be of that race which we have 
fought about so terribly these past years ? 

It may be an old-fashioned way to open the 
Bible when we are pressed with a great diffi- 
culty ; but amid the jargon of voices which are 
now uttering plans of reconstruction, I am 
only assured by the old words of the "Apos- 
tle, "First pure, then peaceable." I have no 
plan of reconstruction to ventilate before you 
to day. I have no great respect for most of 
the plans that come with the endorsement of 
great names. I apprehend that as we learned 
to defeat the armies of the national foe not by 
anybody's theory so much as by an education 
through a hundred bitter defeats, so the Union 
and Liberty will be established, not by any one 
man's method, or all at once. I expect to see 
as many failures, defeats, disappointments in 
the quarter of a century before us as in that 
behind us. Read the history of this Republic 
for the last_twenty-five years. It seems as if 
the slave aristocracy had gained almost 
every battle in council and on the field ; yet the 
people all the time grew wiser and stronger, so 
that the decisive day at the ballot-box, in Con- 
gress, on the field, and on the sea has alwajs 
gone against it. So I expect to see a good 
many fine plans destroyed ; whole States dis- 
organized ; complications in politics and great 
confusion in society over large districts in our 
land. I shall not be surprised to behold great 
men of to-day failing to meet the exigencies of 
to-morrow. I may even see a majority of the 
people beclouded by some storm of passion or 
bewildered by some novel aspect of our strange 
affairs. The old heads of Europe, who know 
by a thousand years' experience what it means 
to reconcile disaffected states, tell us that our 
troubles are now just beginning. We may ap- 



propriate the warning, though uttered with no 
good will to us. 

But I take mj stand on this old maxim 
of Christianity, and say: "First pure, then 
peaceable." Peace and Union in all worlds fol- 
low Purity and Love. As fast as the people of 
these United States approach a genuine purity 
in individual, social, industrial public life, will 
peace sink into the very soul of the nation, and 
union become the essential law of the millions 
that swarm its mighty distances. This national 
purity must assume two phases : negative, ad- 
ministering retribution for past sins ; positive, 
doing the work of the future. 

We have now a portentous question before 
us— a question of the punishment of the trait- 
ors against the nation's life. Who are they ? 
How shall we discriminate the classes of them ? 
Who shall we forgive and who punish ? What 
shall that punishment be ? 

The President of the United States has is- 
sued his proclamation of amnesty. It admits 
all rebels to pardon who take a strong oath to 
the Union and Freedom. But through its excep- 
tions it leaves the entire body of the old slave 
aristocracy in the hands of the Executive and 
People of the United States. Any man or 
woman among the hundreds of thousands in- 
cluded in these exceptions may be arrested, 
tried for treason, sentenced to death under the 
Constitution of the United States ; and the 
President alone has power to remit the penalty. 

This is probably a wise arrangement. It 
does not place this aristocracy in the hands of 
one man, but of the whole people. Andrew 
Johnson can only punish or pardon those whom 
the people declaic should be thus treated. Pub- 
lic opinion is now supreme in the Republic, and 
no President will venture to destroy or save 
against its deliberate mandate. 

So we, the people, will soon be called to make 
up our mind who shall be judicially punished, 
and what that punishment shall be. The loyal 
white people in power in all the Southern 
States will be called to decide what State priv- 
ileges shall be accorded to those who of late 
were traitors. We shall be called to decide 
how we will treat men and women who have 



sympathized with this great crime among our- 
selres. And oh, what a purification of our- 
selves will this necessitate I Who of us has 
clean hands and a pure heart for such an awful 
assize ? If we judge in rengeance, in pagan re- 
taliation, in personarhatred, new-fledged pride, 
or contempt, in any spirit but a pure spirit of 
justice and lofty patriotism, our jadgment will 
embitter ourselves, exasperate our foes, dis- | 
gust the world, and result in new wars before 
we are in'our graves. It is now very easy for our 
people to fight. It was very hard four years 
ago. 17e can have a new war in a year if we | 
choose. We shall have dreadful anarchy unless 
we judge in purity. 

The only punUhmeni w* have any right to 
administer to anyredel Tnan or woman or class 
or State, i» that which shall huild up our whole 
Republic on foundations of Liberty, of Union, 
of Peace, If the life of any man will be 
permanently hostile to that end, we have a 
right to take it. If the residence of any num^ 
ber of people among us will prerent that, we ' 
have a right to send them into exile. If the 
confiscation of the property of any class of 
men is essential to the liberty of all men in the 
regenerated Union, we should do that If any 
State reorganized would turn out another 
South Carolina, we have a right to hold it un- 
der the national military rule till it can safely 
be admitted. If the presence of any set of per- 
sons in Northern or Southern society is poison' 
ing the public mind and morals in this direction, 
we ought to ostracise all such at once. We have 
no right to sacrifice or to spare for any motive 
but for the highest good of the nation. How 
much chastisement and how much mercy we 
need, can only be determined by the event. 
Nobody can reasonably insist on any special 
policy, for the policy must be determined by 
the state of affairs. But every good man should 
insist that this judgment shall he pure ; with 
sovereign view to the lasting good of the Repub- 
lic ; to prevent future revolts in the interest of 
despotism ; to consolidate the Union for the 
freedom of men. Let us pray to- day that God 
will give us grace to take our part in that great 
judgment aright. 



This old slave aristocracy must pass away 
with its peculiar morals, manners, political, so- 
cial, industrial, religious ideas, before the Re- 
public can be at peace. But it cannot be 
crushed out of existence by mere weight of pun- 
ishment. Punishment is only a negative force. 
It breaks down, but does not build up. It de- 
stroys, but does not convert. Alone, it can 
only perpetuate strife. The whole history of 
the (past teaches us that the smallest people, 
whether in the right or in the wrong, cannot 
be destroyed by mere penalty. England has 
ground Ireland two hundred years, but is Ire- 
land at peace with her foe ? We may hang 
every rebel of distinction in the South ; make 
of his family beggars ; follow with all kinds of 
contumely his posterity all over the world — we 
shall not abolish the rebel aristocracy thereby. 

Nothing bad is abolished till something bet- 
ter is ready to take its place. Slave society in 
the South was a bad thing, but it was the only 
thing there, and after it; fashion, subdued the 
country and mada fit "/ the abode of civ- 
ilized man. God uses a good many ugly tools 
to dig up the stumps, and burn the forests, and 
drain the swamps of a howling wilderness. He 
has used this old Egyptian plough, with a feu- 
dal slave, to turn over the sod of these fifteen 
Slave States. Its sin consisted in not dying 
decently when its work was done. It strove 
to live and make all the new world like 
it In the Agricultural Hall in Albany, N. Y., 
is a long line of ploughs, from that used in the 
days of the Pharaoes to the latest improvement 
to-day. Each did a work in its day, and went 
to its own place, with more or less of wailing 
among its friends. If that file of old ploughs 
could be animated with life, and under some 
feudal commander stalk out and claim pos- 
session of the fields of America, they would be 
found just where this old slave society is to- 
day. But the way to supplant them is not to 
make laws against their use, but to invent new 
and better ploughs. As fast as free society can 
get organized on Southern soil, slave society 
will retreat, as the rattlesnakes disappear be- 
fore the cultivation of the earth. The great 
work for the people of the United States is 



11 



now to organize a truly free society all over the 
land. Organize it in the spirit oi purity ; and 
as fast as that order of society grows, the old, 
crude arrangements of the past will go to their 
own place, and become the national antiquities. 

Every true American citizen should now be- 
gin the work of purificat'.on. When the 
knights of the middle ages were about to en- 
gage in a hazardous enterprise they united in > 
the Christian communion. The meaning ofi 
such a day as this is that every citizen should 
solemnly consider his part in this great work 
of building up the waste places of the country, < 
and consecrate himself thereto by an honest, I 
pure, industrious life. All the war of the last i 
stormy years came forth from the selfish and] 
turbulent souls of wicked men, and was fos-j 
tered by the cowardly selfishness of those who | 
dared not stand up for the right. All peace in j 
the future must come out of souls purified by ! 
the radical reverence for man which makes 
Patriotism the same as Religion, This private 
purity will fill the channels of public activity 
and swell the tide of Union. Never was it so 
dangerous to live under the power of low, base, 
sinful motives as to-day, in our land. 

We shall be able to organize free labor in 
the South in proportion as our whole system of 
American industry is purified from the taint of 
dishonesty and selfish oppression of the weak 
by the strong. In such a s^ystem the weakest 
race always goes to the bottom. I would as 
soon trust the negroes to the tender mercies of 
their former masters, as to the crowd of harpies 
and sharpers who are sweeping into Southern 
cities to clutch a fortune. A selfish, dishonest 
man will make a slave of everybody who will 
submit to it. If our only question is : " How 
can these poor people be turned to the most 
profit at once ?" we may keep them virtually 
enslaved under any system. But if we ask:^ 
" How can we educate the complete industrial 
faculties of this eighth part of the American 
people, and make of them a permanent power 
in the nation's development," we may lay the 
foundations of untold wealth of liberty in the 
future. Let every young man who begins life 
this year reflect that he is bound to trans-] 
act business on a nobler principle than has pre- ' 



Tailed, that labor may be ennobled and man- 
hood advanced through thewhole Republic. 

We must purify our whole idea of culture 
An educated man who now perverts his gifts 
and acquirements to the defence of inhumanity ; 
who resists the new civilization, or even ignores 
it in cultivated contempt, should be told that 
his is only a sham culture. Real cultivation 
includes, grows out of, love to man, Man is the 
central object of interest in God's world; and 
he who trifles with science or letters or art in a 
spirit of contempt or indifference to the sacred 
nature of rights of man, is the worst of triflers. 
Southern culture has left out man ; and the 
South has not yet written a book that posterity 
will read. We shall have peace and union 
when our people are all educated to look upon 
a regard for humanity as the test of all mental 
enlargement. 

Especially do we need to purify our social 
life. Do you think to have peace while our 
young men are plunging through the hells of 
drunkenness and sensuality, and our young 
women making shipwreck of womanhood on 
the rocks of a godless social ambition ? One 
of the most powerful forces of the slave rebel- 
lion was the insanity of social ambition among 
the young women of the South. And next to 
that was the fearful demoralization of personal 
character among Southern young men. Every 
godless youth in society swells the tide of this 
barbarism. The time has come when every true 
American woman should make persistent immo- 
rality a disqualification for her society. Every 
man in public life, civil or military ; every man in 
literary, artistic, professionallife, who wantonly 
persists in outraging the common moralities, 
should be shut outside the door of every virtu- 
ous household. Society needs the association 
of the best to regenerate and refine those below. 
And when it smiles upon unblushing wicked- 
ness there can be no true peace. The contempt 
for humanity has been the passport to social 
distinction in our national capital and through 
half our country. All that must be changed. 
Vulgarity is synonymous with contempt of 
man ; and no varnish of culture or gift of na- 
ture can make a gentleman or lady of one who 
despises the image of God. 



The downfall of the slave power will remove 
the worst temptation from our political life. 
That has been the Satan which has seduced and 
destroyed more of our great public men than 
all other causes, But there are still the ele- 
ments of terrible corruption in our free insti- 
tutions ; and on the purification of our politics 
will depend our peace. It is not so important 
whether a part or the whole of the people vote, 
as that the voters are intelligent and honest. It 
is not essential that any set of men should hold 
oflfiee, but that office should be sacredly held 
for the common good, I am far more interested 
in elevating the character of the voters of to- 
day than in agitating for the franchise of any 
new class. No outward [expedient can save 
our politics from despotism. We have intro- 
duced half a dozen new classes to the fran- 
chise during the last fifty years, and every one 
of them has voted for years against the people. 
The negroes will vote just as all ignorant people 
vote. I do not say that is a reason why we 
should keep them away from the ballot-box ; 
but it is a reason why every American citizen 
should devote his best energies to purifying his 
soul and lifting up his neighbors so that all 
shall vote on the side of man and against his 
enemies. Every advance in purity, in the mo- 
tives of the voter, and the life of the ruler, has- 
tens the hour of real peace. 

And oh, my friends, how do we need a pu- 
rifying fire through our American religion! 
Who can wonder at the dreadful history of the 
past when he reflects on the wretched quality 
of much of our Christianity ? No country is 
better than its popular faith. The organized 
religion of America is fast beginning to see that 
love to God and love to man are the sum of 
all piety and morality. We have been trying 
to go on with a spurious, sentimental half-love 
and half-fear of God ; and instead of a love for 
man a selfish greediness for our own salva- 
tion and the success of our sectarian church. It 
won't do. No "salvation" comes by that 
route, but rather such "damnation" as we 
have seen in these mournful years. Oh t let 
the ministers of Christ lift up their voices as 
He did in the days of old, proclaiming that man 



is the centre of all religious interest, and all 
worship of God must show itself real by its re- 
sults on God's dear child. Let our religion 
search for the neighbor among all the children 
of the common Father. Let all our creeds and 
ecclesiasticisms centre in the sanctification of 
humanity, the regeneration of society, the 
changing this very land of ours to the kingdom 
of Chrisf, our Lord. We shall have as much 
peace and union as we haye true religion, and 
we cannot have more. 

Well do I know how slowly such peace can 
come in such a land as ours. But I do not 
despair of its coming. We hare affrighted the 
whole civilized earth by such a war as modern 
days have not seen. We owe it to the world 
now .to do better things for civilization than 
were ever done before. If we have only made 
this destruction to leave a permanent mark, 
history will curse our name. If we have de- 
stroyed only to fulfil a higher order of human 
affairs, our work will be applauded by man and 
approved by God. May this day's observance 
leave us better cit'zens of the Republic. May 
Purity and Peace, sweet handmaids of Union, 
prevail through all our land. 

Cincinnati, May 81, 1865. 



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